Lance Armstrong leads Dave Wiens up the brutal Powerline climb. The two have about 70 miles under their belt here, not even three-quarters done with the Leadville Trail 100. They raced tire-to-tire for almost the whole race. The next racer is 30 minutes back. It’s either of theirs to lose. Wiens pulled ahead atop the climb, but Armstrong caught him at Hagerman Pass Road and the two raced on pavement down to Turquoise Lake and back up to the St. Kevins climb. That’s where LA surrendered and Wiens took ‘er home for his sixth consecutive title and yet another course record: 6:45:45. Armstrong finished second at 6:47:41. Manny Prado, of Costa Rica, took third at 7:20:53 and Crested Butte ski patroller Ethan Passant took fourth at 7:28:00. Passant, by the way, just last week won the 530-mile, fully self-supported Colorado Trail Race with a new record: 5 days, 2 hours, 30 minutes.
Leadville Trail racers = hard.

Here are the 10 racers in the inaugural Colorado Trail Race, an all-singletrack push from Littleton’s Waterton Canyon to Durango. Counting the detours around five wilderness areas, these racers will log 535 miles and 60,000 vertical feet of climbing in their race across the state. Most impressive is that the top riders were aiming to finish in a dizzyingly speedy five days. We’ll have a story on the race in next week’s (July 24) Outdoor Extremes section. But for now … the racers and UPDATES: